Paul Kenny - the GMB and Workfare - Why Have You Signed Up to a Report with an American anti-Union Workfare Company?

The GMB's Endorsement of the Kennedy-Scott Report is an Attack on their Members and the Unemployed

Paul Kenny is the General Secretary of the GMB, a union which has traditionally been on the right-wing of the trade union movement. A largely manual union, it has only succeeded in retaining about 700,000 members through a series of mergers with small unions like the old Boilermakers Union. It has a series of regional officers who are not unlike the old barons of the T&GWU and its membership has little control over the Executive or unelected officers.

Historically however it was what one could call moderate right, in comparison with the far-right Electricians Union and the AUEW Engineering Union under Terry Duffy. Under Paul Kenny however that has changed. Kenny was put in position after losing an election, which was held to be rigged, to Kevin Curran. Kenny has twice been elected unopposed, latterly this year.

Kenny has now, in a glossy pamphlet produced with American Privatisation Company Kennedy Scott, accountancy firm PKF and Portsmouth University and 4 academics (including 2 criminologists – because being unemployed is now a crime) called for further privatisation of the job centres, more private involvement in cheap labour ‘welfare reform’ companies and given open support to workfare.

We call on the members of the GMB to sack its scab General Secretary Paul Kenny and all those on its Executive who played any part in the production of this Report. It is difficult to think of a comparable act of treachery by a trade union leader. One would have to go back to Jimmy Thomas of the NUR in the General Strike to provide a comparison.

A trade union leader who is actively complicit in attempts to demolish the welfare state and who encourages further privatisation of public services has clearly spent too long with New Labour ‘thinkers’ such as John Hutton, James Purnell and Frank Field. He has clearly forgotten, if in fact he ever remembered, that it was the bankers, the spivs and speculators – who have indeed received generous state support – who caused the present crisis. And it is the unemployed and disabled who are being made to pay the price for the follies of the rich. What we don’t expect is for trade union leaders to be complicit in an attack on the very notion of public service and to hold out the USA as some kind of model – a country where it is quite possible to be unemployed and starve, where 40 million have no medical cover, where the idea of the free market runs holds sway and where at the same time as massive personal wealth there is a huge amount of poverty. This is Kenny’s ideal.

Below is an open letter to Paul Kenny from Brighton Unemployed Centre followed by quotes from the Report that the GMB sponsored and a letter from a shop steward in the GMB in Brighton about the Report.

Saturday, 21 May 2011

Paul Kenny
General Secretary
GMB Trade Union
22/24 Worple Road
London
SW19 4DD
Fax to: 020 8944 6552

Dear Mr Kenny,

Two nights ago I attended a meeting to launch the Public & Civil Service Union’s new pamphlet ‘‘Welfare – An Alternative Vision’. Mark Serwortka, PCS General Secretary made mention of the fact that there was a trade union in Britain which had come out in favour of more privatisation of job centres in Britain and had even co-authored a pamphlet with one such pirate, the US Workfare company Kennedy Scott. It emerged that the union was the GMB.

Workfare is working for your dole, which is at the heart of the ‘Welfare Reform’ agenda. It originated in the Wisconsin W-2 program in 1997. As I am sure you will be aware, Wisconsin also ended recognition of public sector trade unions this year. I will leave it to you to work out the relationship between the two.

In 2001 GMB workers in Brighton occupied the waste depot in Hollingdean, Brighton. At that time the depot was run by the private company SITA. As a result of that occupation the service was taken back in-house by the Council. Brighton Unemployed Centre, as your national officer Gary Smith will confirm, gave total support to that occupation including loaning computer equipment and having activists stop scab vehicles from leaving a nearby depot and thus undermine the occupation. Perhaps you might like to explain why privatisation is wrong for the Waste Transfer & Disposal service but fine when it comes to running job centres?

If you want to know what the W-2 Welfare Reform programme means then the following is illustrative:

'W-2 truly ended the entitlement to assistance. Provision of cash grants is no longer based solely on income eligibility. Job readiness, rather than income, is the primary consideration for determining eligibility for cash assistance. Case managers can make a determination that an applicant is job ready, in which case the applicant will not receive cash assistance despite having low or no income.’

The Report you have co-sponsored, alongside PKF Accountancy Group and 4 academics from Portsmouth University, (including 2 criminologists!) argues for greater privatisation. The Report speaks of

‘the importance of outsourcing welfare to work provision to independent providers… The government should recognise that best practice is for contractors to have a presence in job centres’

‘the competitive tendering process, (the) DWP stressed its desire to contract delivery partners from the public, private and voluntary sectors.’

Who would have guessed that PCS and the civil service trade unions were unanimously opposed to CCT. The Report you signed up to informs us that redundancy can be a

‘once in a lifetime opportunity to start again. It is unlikely that the Jobcentre Plus will be able to provide suitable services for former professionals… conversely, a network is emerging which is based on voluntarism and social entrepreneurship.’

I won’t ask if you have officially become a signed up supporter of the Big Society but your support for ‘voluntarism’ and social enterprises, as some solution to unemployment, is indicative of your Tory philosophy and mentality.

In case you had forgotten, privatisation means lower wages and de-recognition of trade unions. Since Thatcherite privatisation, union membership has plummeted and that with the latest economic crisis (yes the bankers don’t get a mention in this report) it is the poor and working class who bear the brunt of restructuring capitalism (another word you don’t seem acquainted with). Yellow/business unionism is not the way out of this predicament, as the United States has amply demonstrated.

As with all PR documents with an academic veneer there is no mention of the less cuddly side of welfare to work, e.g. sanctions, i.e. starving people into work or the fact that workers who have paid national insurance all their life will be hounded the moment they are unemployed into accepting the first cheap labour job on offer.

The Report places great emphasis on America Starts in New York. Here is a description of what this success means:

‘Here's how it works: America on Demand, a staffing company that is a subsidiary of America Works, places job seekers in temporary positions. The employer has no obligations to hire at the conclusion of the subsidized wage period and has little or no risk during the period of subsidized employment because the staffing company is the employer of record. All of the paperwork involved in the program is performed by the staffing company. The employer may terminate the arrangement at any time.’

That a trade union, even a right-wing one like the GMB, should endorse and even encourage further privatisation of public services is an act of scabbing both on workers who have been made redundant and one’s own members.

These companies don’t create jobs they are parasites on the public purse, pure and simple. They get the state to subsidise low wages coupled with the employer being able to terminate the arrangement at any time. There are no employment rights because ‘the staffing company is the employer of record’ i.e. it is an agency employer.

If you have any decency you will resign forthwith and take your place on the Board of Directors of the companies you have given your support to. After all even Judas received his 30 pieces of silver and your entitlement should not be a penny less. If the trade union movement in Britain were to take your advice, it would become as marginalised and weak as US unions.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein
Secretary – Brighton Unemployed Centre

‘The government should recognise that best practice is for contractors to have a presence in job centres’
‘the Government should robustly monitor the sub-contracting market to ensure that competition is maximised’
The Report speaks of ‘improving the employability of the long-term unemployed group’ and

‘the importance of delivering welfare to work provision coming from the public, private and voluntary sectors’.

It speaks of ‘the importance of a more competitive Work Programme tendering process in the future.’

‘It is surely in the national interest that this happens (shorter periods of unemployment). The country is facing the biggest change to the welfare system in 50 years’
‘America has already had considerable experience of these initiatives and there is much to learn.’ It speaks of the ‘work and ethos of Kennedy Scott’ and quotes uncritically the Freud Report that advocated ‘(1) a tightening of conditionality for lone parents;... Significantly the DWP stressed a new personalised and responsive approach…’
‘In particular through the competitive tendering process, DWP stressed its desire to contract delivery partners from the public, private and voluntary sectors.’ But

‘Redundancy can be a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity to start again. It is unlikely that the Jobcentre Plus will be able to provide suitable services for former professionals… conversely, a network is emerging which is based on voluntarism and social entrepreneurship.’
‘Another idea the government should consider is encouraging welfare to work providers to have a presence in Job Centres.’
‘it is important to take account of the more generous benefits system (and the consequential greater difficulty in getting claimants back to work).’

In other words benefits too high and discourage work. Benefits therefore should therefore be lowered (because of course raising wages runs contrary to all notions of privatisation and the free market). The Right calls this the 'dependency culture.'

The Report speaks positively of ‘Outsourcing and contracting-out have a longer history with the 1988 and 1992 Local Government Acts requiring local authorities to competitively tender services such as street cleaning and refuse collection.’
as justification for introducing Kennedy Scott into existing programmes.

The Report speaks of ‘8 client groups ranging from jobseekers under the age of 25 to Employment and Support Allowance recipients who had formerly received Incapacity Benefit. Contractors will receive incentivised fees to deliver successful employment outcomes…. contractors will receive… thirteen four weekly sustainment payments of £215 to encourage in-work support and job retention.’

In short nearly £3,000 pounds which would have stayed with the DWP will be frittered away on parasites like KS whilst benefits are cut and wages lowered.

The Report speaks of a ‘full outsourced recruitment service’ and ‘The introduction of ‘Work Choice’ by the DWP is also to be welcomed as support for people with disabilities seeking employment,… '

There is of course no mention of cuts in disability benefits or the lack of real protection for the working disabled, i.e. it is easy to sack someone if they cannot perform the job. As CEO Cove argues:

‘Nothing spurs innovation like competition. Exposing the welfare-to-work industry to the vagaries of the market is the best thing not only for the taxpayer but for the industry’s clients, as well.’

And of course Kenny is happy for a special plug for KS, for which we will no doubt become an ‘adviser’ in the fullness of time. Included in its case studies is one Maria, a manager from KS ‘it’s possibly the most bizarre company that I’ve worked for… but it’s also an incredibly caring company…’ Very scientific!!

‘Unemployment has been rising and may rise even further if the private sector does not deliver on greater growth and more jobs.’ And being in polite company the Report doesn’t mention how it will deliver these jobs – by cutting public sector jobs and lowering wages and worsening conditions. And of course any attempt at insubordination will be dealt with in the American style, with the complicity of American-style unions like the GMB. Better left unsaid.

‘The country is facing the biggest change to the welfare system in 50 years and the new Work Programme will see up to 3.2 million people (6.3% of the adult population) go through its doors over the next 5 years.’
Well that’s one way of describing savage cuts to the disabled, massive cuts in housing benefits (which affect workers of course), means testing child benefit etc. Far better to describe it neutrally as ‘the biggest change’ as in ‘the accession of Hitler to power meant the biggest change in the situation of Jews in Germany’. No doubt others can improve on this ability to neutralise the political implications of any change.

If the GMB membership has any self-respect Paul Kenny will be given his marching orders and told that if he loves the private sector so much they can pay him.

Below is a letter from the President of Brighton & Hove Trades Union Council, Holly Smith, who is also a GMB Shop Steward, to members of her own branch:

‘As I am sure you are aware, the PCS trade union is currently holding their Congress in Brighton. I attended a meeting there yesterday at which they launched their new booklet ‘Welfare – An Alternative Vision’, an excellent straightforward and accessible booklet which sets out to debunk the myths around benefit claimants and reinforces why we should all be fighting to defend our welfare state.

Speakers at the meeting included Mark Serwotka, PCS General Secretary, and John McDonnell MP. They both spoke at length against the introduction of private providers into the welfare service, and were extremely angry about ‘a trade union’ that has come out in support of introducing private providers to work with the DWP, and the ‘welfare to work’ programmes. Eventually someone in the audience shouted out and asked who it was; I was appalled to hear it was the GMB.

I have spent this morning researching it.

In essence, the GMB has, through a report called ‘Welfare to Work in the 21st Century’ made recommendations that the DWP pilot a US Welfare-to-work programme developed by a company called America Works. The report has been authored by an accountancy firm called PKF (!). You can read the full report here:

Here are some choice selections from the report itself –
The report ‘reflects on the importance of outsourcing welfare to work provision to independent providers’

The report recommends ‘best practice is for contractors to have a presence in job centres’ And recommends ‘the Government should robustly monitor the sub-contracting market to ensure that competition is maximised’

I am incredulous that a trade union is actually recommending and encouraging a Tory Government to increase their free- marketeering! Why on earth are we encouraging the opening up of the public sector to private providers? Do we really believe that introducing a profit motive into the public sector ensures the best possible service??

I have been researching the scheme, and the companies involved, this morning. Here are some of my findings -

- The guy who set the company up, a Mr Cove, is described as ‘one of the nation's leading advocates for private solutions to welfare’

- Mr Cove ‘influences policy makers internationally in his belief that private-sector efforts must be tapped by government’. (taken from his own website).

- The company themselves state “work first was a better strategy to reduce welfare than education and training programs”.

- Candidates participate in up to four weeks of unpaid training, focusing on soft skills like ‘developing a positive attitude’

- Employers ‘try out’ each candidate for up to four months during which time they have no employee rights, and if they are found not to be suitable they are simply released!

At the launch of this report in the House of Lords, the GMB described it as ‘innovative’. How about ‘regressive’ or ‘oppressive’? In a statement Paul Kenny said “The GMB is looking at how best to support both our members who are facing redundancy as the public sector cuts bite and those suffering the scourge of long term unemployment. We welcome the idea of pilots across the country to evaluate how best to do this.”

Apart from the immense political and moral objections I have to opening up welfare provision to private providers, cheap labour, subsidising employers, the treatment of the workers who will be forced into these schemes, etc etc., then does the GMB not realise schemes such as this actually takes jobs away from other workers and serves as a mechanism for keeping wages down and profits up?? Why would a private company keep employing a unionised workforce who have fought for a decent salary and terms and conditions, when they could simply sack them all and rely on an army of cheap labour which they get extra subsidies for, who they can have on permanent rotation?

Of course the GMB should be advocating job creation and getting people into work – but absolutely not in this manner. Why not campaign for a massive house building program, that employs skilled labourers to create quality social housing to solve the massive housing crisis we have in this country? Why not push for creation of jobs in the civil service to tackle tax evasion? Why not push for manufacturing jobs in sustainable technologies? I could go on.

I had a meeting with the other shop stewards in my workplace this morning (who are copied into this email), to discuss this matter. We would like to know why on earth our trade union is actually advocating the further exploitation of the working class. We feel that this report is nothing but an opportunity for private providers to profit from exploiting workers, and is an attack on unemployed workers, an attack on workers in jobs, and essentially an attack on trade unionism and it’s core values.

I would like your advice as to how we progress this complaint further, and also to ask how we go about writing an emergency motion for this to be discussed at Congress.

Thank you. I look forward to hearing from you.

Holly Smith
Contracts Team & GMB Shop Steward
CityClean & CityParks
Brighton and Hove City Council
Hollingdean Depot

Further quotes:

'The current programs that involve tax credits and training to place welfare recipients and the unemployed in private sector jobs cost the state about $5.2 billion a year. But there is little to show for the expenditure. Labor Department programs that subsidize companies to train new workers are entangled in the red tape of government rules and regulations. The government is slow to pay the employers and companies have been wary of government coming in to audit books and review compliance.'

'Tax credits to encourage companies to hire also have been largely futile. There are two grave problems with tax credits. First, companies losing money do not need the credits to begin with. Second, the companies don't receive the subsidy until more than a year after the initial hire -- too late for business struggling in this economic climate.'

'But there is a program that has been effective. A $14 million subsidy program funded with federal stimulus dollars and managed by the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance has helped businesses keep people employed and actually created jobs. It might well be a model for tackling our seemingly intractable high unemployment.'

'Here's how it works: America on Demand, a staffing company that is a subsidiary of America Works, places job seekers in temporary positions. The employer has no obligations to hire at the conclusion of the subsidized wage period and has little or no risk during the period of subsidized employment because the staffing company is the employer of record. All of the paperwork involved in the program is performed by the staffing company. The employer may terminate the arrangement at any time.'

'The employer sees an offer to hire from the staffing company that is no different from an offer without a subsidy, except the net wage cost is lowered by the amount of the subsidy during the trial period. Companies have flocked to the program because of the streamlined process and because they do not have to wait for payment.'

'Only if the worker stays for 90 days in the job can the contractor receive the full reimbursement for its services from the state. This assures that the worker stands a good chance of being hired and staying in the job. In fact, in one program where more than 200 people have been placed, close to 100 percent have been hired permanently.'

'America Works also has on staff corporate representatives, otherwise known as case managers. Our Corporate Reps go out on the job sites and make sure that America Works’ clients are doing well on the job. If there is a problem with our clients, we will either fix the problem with the employer or we will send that company another qualified individual. Our Corporate Reps meet with our clients and, help them deal with any life problems they have that might prevent them from staying on the job – issues like day care, food stamps, work-appropriate clothing, housing, health insurance, and counseling, to name a few.'

Peter Cove

One other little item about Paul Kenny. When the TUC at its 2010 Conference sought to condemn Israel and the Histadrut for the attack on Gaza and the murder of 1,400 people, including 400+ children, Kenny sought to water the motion down substituting 'notes' for 'condemn'. Not surprisingly this scab is also a Zionist!

Jewish Chronicle Columnist Geoffrey Alderman expresses his 'pleasure' at the murder of Vittorio Arrigoni, Italian and ISM Peace Activist

How Long is the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland Content to Lend Credibility to Venomous Racists like Geoffrey Alderman?

Contrast the Hate-Filled Mind of Geoffrey Alderman with the Life of Vittorio Arrigoni Who Lived for Others

I must confess that when I read the hate filled words of Geoffrey Alderman, I was somewhat taken aback. It’s not often that you read a columnist of a paper like the Jewish Chronicle glorifying, indeed expressing positive ‘pleasure’ in the death of a young man, cruelly murdered by fanatic followers of the Al Quada brand of Islam. That his murderers belong to an organisation that was effectively the creation of the Saudi monarchy, the Pakistani ISI and the CIA is a fact that Alderman has no comprehension, still less understanding of.

He probably has even less comprehension of the fact that Hamas owes its existence to the machinations of Israel's Shin Bet, which in the 1980's sponsored Islamic fundamentalism as a counter-weight to secular Palestinian nationalism.

We are all used to vicious personal attacks by Zionists. It is a sign that not only are we winning the war but that our opponents have nothing to say. I have often had comments along the lines of a pity the Nazis didn't get you, but to read in - in what used to be an august publication - a columnist expressing his warped pleasure at the death of a peaceful activist demonstrates that despite its use of 'Shalom' Zionism is motivated primarily by hatred of the other.

There was a time when Alderman, on leaving the Board of Deputies of British Jews, heard the sounds of jeering all round. Never a popular man, he was described in the Jewish Chronicle as a ‘communal gadfly.’ That was the title of a collection of his columns (not the most sought after publication it must be said!).

But even for the Jewish Chronicle, whose unparalleled ability to ignore the oppression of the Palestinians, the racism and the barbarities, is unsurpassed, Alderman takes the biscuit. If Alderman were really concerned about ‘Jew haters’ or any other haters he might have a word to say in passing about the sayings of racist Rabbis who justify the deaths of non-Jews as sub-humans and talk about 'Jewish blood' in the same way as Hitler did. But of course Alderman has no such qualms, being as he is a prime example of a Jewish racist.

The attack of the Aldermans of this world, far from diminishing can only enhance the reputation and memory of fine young activists like Vittorio and Rachel Corrie. In the process Alderman has only diminished himself even further, though it is arguable that Alderman had already sunk to the bottom of the Zionist sewer.

For our tribute to a brave young man see. http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2011/04/memorial-picket-for-vittorio-arrigoni.html

I have penned a letter to the JC, but knowing its record for printing contrary opinions under its podgy failed tabloid editor Stephen Pollard, I am issuing this as an open letter instead.

The only other question is how long is the Guardian's liberal Zionist leader-writer, Jonathan Freedland, going to continue to share space with the execrable Alderman.

Tony Greenstein

Letters Editor, The Jewish Chronicle, 25 Furnival Street,London EC4A 1JT

Dear Sir or Madam:

Even by his own standards, the statement of your columnist, Geoffrey Alderman, (This was no 'peace activist) that nothing had caused him ‘greater pleasure in recent weeks than news of the death of the Italian so-called "peace activist" Vittorio Arrigoni.’ has plumbed a new low.

Vittorio Arrigoni, came out to Gaza to support the breaking of a starvation siege, the purpose of which is to punish the Palestinians of Gaza for having elected Hamas rather than Fateh. The suggestion that he or Ken O'Keefe, who desperately appealed to his murderers to spare his life, were ‘Jew haters’ is as obscene as it is a lie. Like Rachel Corrie and many other ISM members, Jewish and non-Jewish, the only thing that motivated Vittorio were Israel’s attacks on a defenceless refugee, population.

Alderman’s ‘proof’ of Vittorio’s anti-Semitism is a cartoon of Jesus being arrested by the Israeli military. Not only does Alderman not understand what anti-Semitism, is but it would seem he has had a sense of humour failure. Undoubtedly Jesus would have been subject to harassment by today’s occupiers of Palestine, just as he was by the Romans. Comparisons between the repression of the Palestinians, the life of Jesus and the living reality of Bethlehem today, surrounded by the ugliness of the Apartheid Wall, are only too apposite. If Alderman were a man of subtlety, rather than an academic past his sell-by-date, he would recognise the irony of Israel having rebuilt the ghetto walls in Israel/Palestine.

When people like Vittorio Arrigoni and Ken Keefe saved Jews during the holocaust they were recognised as ‘righteous gentiles’. When people refuse to turn a blind eye to the Palestinians they are, according to Alderman, ‘Jew haters’.

The hysterical and vitriolic attack of Alderman on what he terms ‘Hamas supporters’, continues the lie that to support the Palestinians of Gaza is to politically support Hamas.

There was a time when Geoffrey Alderman was a thorn in the side of the powers that be, not least in his criticisms of the Board of Deputies for its attacks on anti-fascists in the 1970’s. Today he is no more than a pale male reflection of Melanie Phillips, minus her journalistic talent.

In glorifying and expressing pleasure in the strangulation of an unarmed peace-activist, Geoffrey Alderman does no more than contrast what a hateful, mean-minded individual he is in comparison with Vittorio Arrigoni.

Yours faithfully

Tony Greenstein

‘The Only Democracy in the Middle East’ Murders 13 Unarmed Demonstrators

On the day that it was announced that Libya’s Col. Ghadaffi will likely be indicted at the International Criminal Court at the Hague for war crimes, there was a strange omission. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been responsible for the murder of thousands of Palestinians, found his name left off the list of potential war crimes.

The latest killings, 13 at the latest count, occurred when peaceful and unarmed demonstrators at the Lebanese border, the Golan Heights and Gaza’s Erez Junction, among other places, were killed in cold blood and hundreds injured, tear gassed and arrested as they commemorated the Day of the Nakba.

Nakba means ‘Catastrophe’ and that is how it is seen by Palestinians. Between 1947 and 1948, Zionist militias deliberately massacred thousands of Palestinians in order to ‘encourage’ ¾ million Palestinians to leave for neighbouring Arab countries, never to return. The aim was the creation of a ‘Jewish’ State in Israel on May 15^th 1948. To establish a state with a decisive Jewish majority in a land where the majority of the population were non-Jewish, it was absolutely vital to expel the vast majority of Palestinians from the area of that State. That was why ‘Transfer’ Committees had been set up under the Jewish Agency to plan the mechanics of the expulsion.

In subsequent years Israel wove the myth about how the Arabs had voluntarily left their homes in order that the armies of the neighbouring Arab states could enter. In time Israeli historians, such as Simha Flapan [The Birth Of Israel Myths And Realities], Benny Morris [The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem,1947–1949] and Ilan Pappe [The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine] demolished this revisionist attempt to rewrite history, although Morris’s views have become the Zionist equivalent of the Nazi attitude to Jews. His only regret now is that the expulsion of the Palestinians wasn’t completed and 100% had been expelled.

Ever since 1948 Israel had been engaged in trying to erase the collective memory of the Nakba. Over 250 villages, the names of which the late Professor Israel Shahak, a holocaust survivor himself, were uncovered as part of the process of rediscovering the memory of 1948. The Jewish National Fund, which today tries to cover itself in ‘green’ credentials planted forests and parks over those villages that the Kibbutzim – the symbol of ‘socialist Zionism’ hadn’t already stolen and built upon.

The articles below are from a number of different angles. The first is from an Israeli protestor, Yossi Schwartz, who describes the arrests and attacks on peaceful demonstrators describes this process of rewriting history. The ‘Nakba Bill’ of the semi-fascist Yisrael Beteinu, effectively outlaws mention of the Nakbah. The Nakba is not to be mentioned in the school curriculum and local authorities that hold events to commemorate it are fined (i.e. Arab local authorities which receive on average one-third per capita grants of similar Jewish local authorities.

But the more the Zionists try to ban and erase the memory of the crimes of 1948, the more it is embedded in the consciousness of Israel’s Palestinians. There is also an account of the various demonstrations and the attacks on them all over Israel and the occupied territories.

Below this is a description of how thousands of Syrians and Palestinians marched to the ‘border’ with Israel – in reality the illegally occupied Golan Heights that Israel captured in 1967. Again Israel used its normal customary force to repel the native population seeking access to their land although they were taken by surprise.

Underneath is a report from the International Solidarity Movement of the demonstration in Al-Walaja, which was also viciously attacked by the Zionist military and noted human rights and peace campaigner Professor Mazen Qumsiyah was arrested.

But whenever things go wrong for Israel’s public relations one can always rely on the BBC to step in to the breach. So John Humphries of the Today programme managed to describe the demonstrations as marking the creation of the State of Israel! Presumably by that feat of logic, Holocaust Memorial Day is really about remembering the creation of the Third Reich! Is it any wonder that people are ignorant of what happens in Israel/Palestine when the BBC deliberately misleads and misinforms. Simon Natas has written an excellent letter of complaint to the BBC about their coverage and I hope you do too.

Tony Greenstein

Nakba Day Report from an Israeli

On Nakba day, March 15, the writer of this article participated in a demonstration in the North of Israel 14 km from the Lebanese border. We were a group of about 400 who tried to reach the border with Lebanon, but we were forced to stop by the police. We were allowed to demonstrate for one hour and were then attacked by the policy with tear gas about 10 of us suffered for hours from this attack and 22 of us were arrested. However compared to other Palestinians and the few Jews who participated in the Golan Heights, Ras Maroun in Lebanon and Gaza, the price we paid for the right to demonstrate for the Palestinian refugees to return was negligible.

Israel is doing everything to erase the memory of the Nakba. It removes the fact from the rewritten official books of history

The "Nakba bill", proposed by Yisrael Beiteinu, requires the state to fine local authorities and other state-funded bodies for holding events marking the Palestinian Nakba Day.

The second bill, which passed by a majority of 35 to 20, formalizes the establishment of admission committees to review potential residents of Negev and Galilee communities that have fewer than 400 families..

After the passing of the bill the Knesset erupted in riots as MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta'al), refusing to limit himself to the comparison of the bill to South Africa's apartheid, mentioned the Wannsee Conference in which the Nazis decided on the Holocaust's "final solution" – or the gassing of Jews.

However, following yesterday demonstrations and the cold blood murder of number of Palestinians, the name "Nakba" become familiar for many people around the world. The Nakaba (catastrophe ) refers to the 1948 founding of Israel when the Israeli army expelled between 700.000 to 900.000 Palestinians to create a capitalist state with Jewish Majority.

At least one Palestinian was killed and up to 80 others wounded in northern Gaza as Israeli troops opened fire on a march of at least 1,000 people heading towards the Erez crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel.

A group of Palestinians, including children, marching to mark the "Nakba" were shot by the Israeli army after crossing a Hamas checkpoint and entering what Israel calls a "buffer zone" - an empty area between checkpoints where Israeli soldiers generally shoot trespassers, Al Jazeera's Nicole Johnston reported from Gaza City on Sunday

Hamas' leader in the Gaza Strip Ismail Haniyeh in his speech said :.

"Palestinians mark the occasion this year with great hope of bringing to an end the Zionist project in Palestine,"

At the same time acting on the Fatah-Hamas new agreement .Hamas tried to prevent the demonstrators from reaching the Buffer Zone. According to one of the demonstrators interviewed by Al Jazeera "Hamas has asked us to leave; they are trying to move people away from the Israeli border. They say seeing so many people at the border indicates a shift in politics in the area."

AFP has reported that Israeli gunfire killed 12 people and wounded hundreds in MAJDAL SHAMS, Golan Heights occupied in 1967, as Palestinians marched on Israel's borders with Lebanon, Syria and Gaza in a mass show of mourning over the creation of the Jewish state.

Israeli army radio reported that dozens were wounded when Palestinian refugees from the Syrian side of the Golan Heights border were shot for trying to break through the frontier fence. The demonstrators carried key of their houses that Israel has destroyed or gave to Israelis following the mass expulsion of the Palestinians

IDF spokesman Brig.-Gen. Yoav "Poli" Mordechai described the incident in which Palestinians demonstrators crossed from Syria into Israel as an "Iranian provocation"

Israeli government officials have blamed Syria for "intentionally allowing hundreds of Syrian Arabs who called themselves Palestinians to cross into the Golan Sunday.

Syria is home to 470,000 Palestinian refugees.

There have also been reports that Israeli gunfire killed 10 people and injured scores more in the Lebanese town of Ras Maroun, on the southern border with Israel.

In the southern city of Hebron, 12 people were hit by rubber bullets fired by Israeli troops as an estimated 2,000 demonstrators held a protest, medical and security sources said.

One of the biggest Nakba demonstrations was held near Qalandiya refugee camp and checkpoint, the main secured entry point into the West Bank from Israel, where about 100 protesters marched, Al Jazeera's Nisreen El-Shamayleh reported from Ramallah.

In Jeruslaem there were many clashes with the Police, following the murder of Milad Ayyash, 16, on Saturday morning in East Jerusalem' killed by shots fired from the Beit Yonatan apartment complex, inhabited by Jewish settlers, in the predominantly Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan. Palestinian demonostrators attempted take over Palestinian houses given to Jewish setllers in Shiekh Jerah called now by the settlers Moscowitz housing project.

The main chant coming from the Palestinian demonstrators was : The Palestinian people want to return to their land that Israel has stolen. Many held keys to their houses that by now have been destroyed or given to Jewish settlers.

In Jordan, six people were injured as police tried to stop 200 students from marching on the border, while in Turkey, about 100 demonstrators held a protest outside the Israeli consulate in Istanbul, AFP correspondents said.

It is clear that the Palestinian revolution that is pushed forward by the Palestinian youth is part of the Arab revolution that engulfs the Middle East. All the attempts to isolate the Palestinians and prevent a popular uprising could not prevent the courageous demonstrators from raising the need for a revolution ..

The events yesterday have shown any one with eyes to see and ears to hear that a key question of the so called Israeli-Arab conflict is the Palestinian right of return.

The Israeli government has defended the killing of the Palestinians who tried to return to their land stolen by Israel.

In reaction to the killing of unarmed Palestinians that took place on Israel's existing borders on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel was determined to defend itself and its sovereignty.

Netanyahu said that the Nakba Day protests were not about the 1967 borders, but rather about "undermining the very existence of Israel."

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Sunday that Israel Defense Forces soldiers succeeded in defending Israel's sovereignty when Palestinian refugee demonstrators breached the border with Syria and attempted to cross the border with Lebanon.

Netanyahu is right on one point. The demonstrations yesterday were not for a Mini Palestinian state alongside Israel controlling 80 % of Palestine. It was for the right of the refugees to return to their land. Once the refugees will be able to return the majority of the people living in this country would be Palestinians. For this reason Israel will be ready to kill thousands and thousands of Palestinians in an attempt to prevent such an outcome, and as long as Israel will exist the Palestinian refugees will not be able to return.

Thus, history has phrased the question the following: Either the right of the Israeli to rule Palestine and not allowed the right of self determination of the Palestinians or the right of self determination for the Palestinians that negate the right of self determination of the Israelis on Palestinian lands as all Israel is stolen land.

While Israeli Jews can live in security and equality in A Palestinian workers state and the Jewish workers who will join the revolution will be part of the ruling class in a workers state. the continuation of the Israeli state means not only the killing of Palestinians and Arabs but that Israel is a death trap for the Israelis..The clearest case demonstrating this fact is the refusal of Israel to release Shalit by releasing 450 Palestinian political prisoners.

We in the Internationalist Socialist League in Israel( occupied Palestine) in a leaflet we distributed yesterday said::For the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands, the only solution is a socialist revolution that will create a Palestinian workers state from the river to the sea as part of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East.

Yossi Schwartz

Dramatic video shows Palestinians, Syrians entering Israeli-occupied Golan Heights

Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Sun, 05/15/2011 - 16:10

A dramatic video published by the website baladee.net shows the moment when hundreds of Palestinian refugees and Syrians break through the border fence from Syria into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights (part of Syria occupied by Israel in 1967 and illegally annexed in 1981).

The video, which appears to be taken from the Israeli-occupied side shows a group of hundreds or perhaps thousands of marchers carrying Palestinian flags heading toward the boundary fence. Spectators on the Israeli-occupied side – apparently worried about the safety of the marchers – call on them to go back because of the danger of land mines.

However, undeterred, the marchers continue, and break through the border fence as people on both sides call for the liberation of Palestine. As the marchers break through there are scenes of joy, high emotion and embraces with those on the Israeli-occupied side. One man is heard to say, “This is how liberation is.”

Al Nakba In Al Walajeh

Neta Golan

International Solidarity Movement

At 11 AM on al-Nakba remembrance day, 500 residents from the West Bank village of al-Wallajeh and international supporters marched towards the Israeli Apartheid Wall. The Wall was built to separate the villagers from their original land from which they were expelled in
1948. The demonstration was violently attacked by the Israeli military with rubber coated steal bullets, tear gas and protesters were beaten with batons and rifles. One youth was hospitalized after being injured by a rubber coated steal bullet .

Eight Palestinians including twins aged 11 and 6 internationals (American, Dutch, German and Canadian nationals) were arrested. The army proceeded to raid the village and invade each house, searching for people who had participated in the demonstrations. The raids as
well as confrontations between the army and the village youth are ongoing.

The Arrested Palestinans are:
Mazen Qumsiyah
Basel Al Araj
Ahmed Al Araj
Mohammad Al Araj
Allah And Mohammed Abu Tin 11 year old twins
Tarek Abu Tin
Adel Abu Tin

Al-Walaja is an agrarian village of about 2,000 people, located south of Jerusalem and West of Bethlehem. Following the 1967 Occupation of the West Bank and the redrawing of the Jerusalem municipal boundaries, roughly half the village was annexed by Israel and included in the Jerusalem municipal area. The village's residents, however did not receive Israeli residency or citizenship, and are considered illegal in their own homes.

Once completed, the path of the Wall is designed to encircle the village's built-up area entirely, separating the residents from Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and almost all their lands - roughly 5,000
dunams. Previously, Israeli authorities have already confiscated approximately half of the village's lands for the building of the Har Gilo and Gilo settlements, and closed off areas to the south and west of it. The town's inhabitants have also experienced the cutting down of fruit orchards and house demolition due to the absence of building permits in Area C.

According to a military confiscation order handed to the villagers, the path of the Wall will stretch over 4890 meters between Beit Jala and alWallaja, affecting 35 families, whose homes may be slated for demolition.

For more information call

Mahmud Zawahre 0599586004

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a Palestinian-led non-violent resistance movement committed to ending Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian land. We call for full compliance with all relevant UN resolutions and international law.

For specific media inquires such as interview requests, photo usage, etc. please email the ISM Media Office at media@palsolidarity.org

Reply to: inpnpr@googlegroups.com

Letter to the BBC - Palestinians Don't Celebrate Their Own Expulsion!

Dear Sirs,

This morning, on both Radio 4 and Radio 5 Live news, yesterday's protests by Palestinians to mark Nakbah Day were described as "demonstrations to mark the creation of the State of Israel". On the Today programme, John Humphrys introduced a discussion about the events using the same words (i.e. that the protests were marking the creation of the State of Israel).

In reality, the occasion of the protests was "Nakbah day." The demonstrators were not "marking the creation of the State of Israel" but the forcible expulsion of some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in what has become known as the "Nakbah" - the Palestinian national disaster. They were also protesting against the continued refusal of the Israeli authorities to allow the refugees their right of return in compliance with UN Resolutions.

To describe the protests as marking the creation of the State of Israel was grossly misleading because any listener who did not already know the reasons for the demonstrations might be given the impression that the protesters were celebrating the creation of the State of Israel rather than highlighting the plight of Palestinian refugees.

This misrepresentation is likely to have caused considerable offence to anyone, Palestinian or not, who understands the meaning and importance of the Nakbah. Anyone who did not already know the purpose demonstrations would have been left misled and confused about yesterday’s events.

That the BBC should report the issues in this way is of deep concern. Those who wrote the news reports would surely have known that the demonstrations were organised to mark Nakbah day and highlight the plight of the refugees. I should therefore be grateful if you would confirm how the BBC came to report the event in the way that it did. Was there an editorial decision to avoid the use of the word "Nakbah" or the phrases "creation of Palestinian refugees" or "expulsion of Palestinian civilians"? If so, why?

Would the BBC also ensure that all further bulletins use wording that accurately describes the purpose of the demonstrations?

Thank you for your assistance.

Yours faithfully,

Simon Natas

Brighton Unemployed Centre Celebrates 30 Years

Still Fighting After 30 Years

In the mid-1980’s there were some 250 unemployed centres in Britain. Today there are possibly 20 functioning centres left, if that. Most of those that remain are little more than advice or training centres. They have died of neglect and indifference, not least by the Trades Union Conference and trade unions.

Brighton was always a radical centre. It refused, despite pressure from the TUC, to take money from the Manpower Services Commission, a government quango, to employ people because of the strings attached. We weren’t there to train a low paid workforce or to hassle people into jobs but to support claimants and those who were unwaged.

The story of the Centre is told elsewhere. Suffice to say that in our 30 years we have faced various attempts to destroy us, primarily by New Labour.

In 1992 New Labour froze our grant because we had publicly opposed the setting up of the Child Support Agency, In 1996-7 New Labour made concerted attempts, in concert with certain anarchists and other reactionaries, to turn the centre into a non-political services centre catering to the unwaged. The level of the Council’s participation in destabilising us were uncovered years later when a complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman uncovered their foul deeds, led by someone even fouler, one Lord Steven Bassam, ex-squatter and a politician who’d sell his mother to the devil if it advanced his career.

We walked out of the Council run Unemployed Centre with enough money, in a political account, to set up a new Centre. Despite cries of fraud and anguish from the dregs that remained at Tilbury Place, we succeeeded in our aims.

In 1999 New Labour under a Councillor Jean Lepper, refused us planning permission. We defied the Council, opened anyway and have thrived every since. We have been a base for radical groups and activities in Brighton ever since. Ironically in the elections just gone, two out of three New Labour councillors were unseated by the Green Party and the local MP is of course Caroline Lucas of the Green Party.

We have also been highly critical of the TUC which has failed at every step to give any support to Centres. There are now no centres in London, a tribute to the incompetence and indolence of the South-East Region of the TUC [SERTUC] under Megan Dobney's brilliant stewardship. The latter, who is apparently a ‘communist’, has tried to police us via the local trades council. SERTUC has even gone to the lengths of not distributing publicity for a concert by Will Kaufmann, an American professor and performer and interpreter of Woody Guthrie’s songs! In February 2009 I resigned from the TUC's useless Consultative Committee on the Unemployed

On the afternoon of May 2nd, the Centre held as it usually does, a family day at the Hollingdean Community Centre with speakers from the local anti-cuts coalition, trade unionists and myself. A thoroughly good time was had by all before we go back to our job of supporting the unemployed and fighting the attacks on benefits and claimants.

Tony Greenstein

The Palestine Cables’: U.S. diplomats get front row seat to Israeli racism

Security Chief Yuval Diskin Condemn Arab MKs for 'Abusing' Democracy

Alex Kane on April 15, 2011

18 April 2011 00:47:33

WikiLeaks has partnered up with the Israeli newspapers Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth and the Lebanese outlet Al Akhbar to release over 6,000 State Department cables on Israel. A series of posts on the new cables will be published in Mondoweiss in the coming days as part of the "Palestine Cables" feature. Read the whole series here.

U.S. diplomats don't have to turn to other sources--the media or the State Department's human rights reports, for example--to learn that Israeli officials and the state they serve are racist. Instead, they get a front row seat, as revealed in recent State Department cables published by Israeli newspapers.

One cable from November 2009 describes a meeting "between US officials and outgoing Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin," as the Jerusalem Post reported Ma'an News Agency's Charlotte Alfred reported on the contents in that cable:

The latest cables to be released, detailed in Haaretz, show Israel’s internal security chief telling a US diplomat in May 2008 that Palestinians in Israel "have taken their rights too far."

The Shin Bet is a "voice for assisting Arab-Israelis constructively," the agency’s director Yuval Diskin said before continuing to outline the threat posed by Palestinian members of the Israeli parliament and Palestinians entering Israel via family unification.

The reunification of West Bank- and Gaza-born family members of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship or residency has been in effect halted since 2003.

Diskin said prior allowances for reunification had been "foolish," as Palestinians in Israel have family connections with "bad people on the other side doing bad things," and such relatives "brought their bad ideas with them."

The security chief also alluded to race-based concerns about maintaining a Jewish minority. He said that "The Bedouin have brought women with them from the Gaza Strip and Jenin, and now have many children."

"We need to manage this immigration in a controlled way," he continued.

Diskin criticized the role of Palestinian members of Israel's parliament, the Knesset, saying that "these people don’t spread Israel's democratic values and principles, and abuse their diplomatic immunity."
They are "flirting with the enemy," he alleged, "co-opted by people like [Syrian President] Bashar Assad."

He accused Palestinian Knesset members of trying to take the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a new direction and give it a new “national color."

"Thankfully, they are not succeeding, and their efforts are not filtering down to the general public, which is more concerned with daily life."

An April 8 report in YNet News detailed Palestinian members of the Knesset's "furious" reaction to Diskin's comments:

"What Diskin said is akin to an earthquake, he has gone too far," MK Taleb El-Sana (United Arab List-Ta'al) said. "He meant to say that the Shin Bet was operating the state in all areas..."
MK Hanin Zoabi (Balad) was also furious. "With this statement Diskin has defined us as enemies and not citizens," she said, explaining that the Shin Bet chief was continuing a political attack he began in 2007, "when he said he would target any struggle aimed at achieving equality in the state".

In 2007, Yuval Diskin, Shin Bet Head said that "he would target any struggle aimed at achieving equality in the state".

"We know what Diskin means when he says we bring negative ideas with us. He wants to shut us up," she said.

"We don't care what people say about our participation in Palestinian conferences together with people from all over the world. What Diskin fears is what we say about Israeli democracy and the new laws."
A separate cable reported on by Haaretz shows Isaac Herzog, a Labor Party member of the Knesset, disparaging his rival Amir Peretz to U.S. diplomats during a January 2006 meeting:
The cable documents a meeting between then-MK Herzog and a senior American diplomat, in which Herzog took his comments considerably beyond political correctness. While allowing that the main damage to Labor's ratings in the polls was caused by the ascendance of Kadima, he said damage was also done by "the public perception of Peretz as inexperienced, aggressive and Moroccan."

Herzog drew optimism, however, from Labor's "excellent" Knesset list, which he described as a team that "includes Ashkenazi members [of European descent] to balance out Peretz's Sephardi [Middle Eastern] background."

Herzog and Robert Danin, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, have denied that Herzog said those remarks about Peretz.

But even if Herzog and Danin's denials are true, you don't have to look far for more evidence of Israeli state racism--like the recent bill authorizing communities in the Negev and Galilee to "filter" out residents through "selection committees," which "will enjoy a great deal of latitude and discretion in their accepting or rejecting of candidates, especially Arab candidates, who wish to make a home for themselves on predominantly state-owned land."

Oded Pilavsky - Co-founder of Matzpen - Obituaries

I have to confess that I hadn’t heard of Oded Pilavsky until he died. But the tributes from Israeli anti-Zionists and leftists make it clear that he was an exceptional person and a light in the darkness that is Israel. Tony Greenstein

Comrade Oded (Odik) Pilavsky

By Moshé Machover – 17 Apr 2011
In memoriam: Comrade Oded (Odik) Pilavsky, 1932-2011

Matzpen co-founder Oded Pilavsky

Odik was, these many years, my comrade in struggle and a dear personal friend.

When we were still members of the Israeli CP, he was known to me as a fearless fighter for the interests of the working class, both immediate and historical interests – namely, for the future of humanity as a whole; for a just, equal and free society, without exploitation and oppression.
It was therefore no accident that when Akiva Orr and I looked for partners for establishing a new socialist organisation (which was eventually known as Matzpen), he was the first person we contacted. We discovered that he too was looking for partners for a road leading in the same direction.

Since that meeting, in the spring half a century ago, I was privileged to know him well personally. I loved him as a friend. Now the purest, most courageous and most honest heart I have ever known has stopped beating.

More than any other comrade, he embodied Matzpen’s political road.

Some define Matzpen as an “anti-Zionist organization”. This is misleading. Of course, we have struggled uncompromisingly against Zionist ideology and practice. But for us this was not the point of departure, but a necessary consequence of our revolutionary socialist, internationalist position. The journal Matzpen, of which Odik was editor, carried the sub-heading “A workers’ monthly”.

These values found their concentrated expression in Odik’s personality and activity. He was proud of his working-class origin (his father was a worker in the Dead Sea Potash industry) and of his belonging to this class. He was a leader of workers’ struggles – not an appointed leader, but one who emerged from the ranks, in the course of the struggle itself.

His death has deprived us of a friend and comrade; and the socialist movement in Israel, the region and the world has lost a rare personality, a first-rank fighter for a better world.
We shall cherish his memory, and continue along his path.

Moshé Machover

" Oded Pilavsky - 1932-2011"

By Adam Keller. Gush Shalom. April 16, 2011.

Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2011 16:24:09 –0300

l
In June 1967, the occupation regime in the Palestinian territories was only a few weeks old. Most citizens of Israel were still in the grip of nationalist euphoria at the military victory and admiration for the victorious army (including, it must be noted, also the author of these lines). But even in those days there were people - a small group, and at the time very isolated - who came out in protest at the newborn occupation and condemned it in graffiti written at night on the walls of Tel Aviv.

"The Socialist Organization in Israel" was the official name by which they called themselves, those pioneers of the anti- occupation struggle, but the media – which often attacked and condemned them - usually called them "Matzpen" ("Compass"), the name of the paper which they published with considerable effort and sold on the streets (an act often involving a very real risk).

One of the most prominent among this group was Oded Pilavsky, whom I always saw in demonstrations against the occupation during all the years in which I participated in them - and who had participated in a wide variety of demonstrations and struggles, long before there was an occupation, long before I was born. Last week, his brave and generous.heart stopped beating
From the article which he wrote about his life and his long and complicated political path, I chose to bring two excerpts, which are still highly relevant today.

Taking possession of "the abandoned harvest"

Kibbutz Mashavim (now "Mashavey Sadeh") of which I was a member belonged to Hakibutz HaMeuhad (United Kibbutz Movement), and there was a strong Left Zionist atmosphere. At the celebration marking two years of the Kibbutz's foundation we placed, at the corner of the hall where the celebration took place, a large wooden box inscribed with "Donations to support the Sailors' Strike". Representatives of two Bedouin tribes who lived nearby, Abu-Rgayyek and A-Sana, were also invited to take part in the celebration. They were given seat at the front of the hall, near the stage. (...)

Soon after that, at the end of the planting season in 1950, the Israeli Army expelled several Bedouin tribes from the Tel-Arad region across the Jordanian border. And that was not an isolated case. At the Negev Heights, other Bedouin tribes were deported across the border with Egypt. I was called upon to take part in what was termed "Harvesting the abandoned fields" near Tel – Arad. My participation in that act affected me deeply and sharpened my perception of the Zionist practice of ethnic cleansing.

That is how it was: The winter of 1950-1951 was exceptionally blessed with rain. The barley which the Bedouins had sown before their expulsion yielded a magnificent crop whose like is seen in this part of our country only once in a decade. It was the kibbutzniks, led by the army's Negev command, who immediately took possession and started harvesting the flourishing high corn, fruit of the labor of the Bedouin Arabs who had been expelled from the country after sowing. A tent camp was established there, for several weeks, to provide housing and meals to those who industriously carried out this task." Each Kibbutz was assigned a plot to be harvested. The barley grain was taken by trucks to the market. The proceeds distributed among the participating kibbutzim in proportion to their contribution to the common effort of the stolen ("abandoned"). harvest.

I was among the porters, taking up with great effort the full sacks of barley and transporting them from the fields to the camp and then onto the trucks to the market. Suddenly, in the middle of loading, the scales fell from my eyes and I finally started to comprehend what was happening there. A collectivist bunch imbued with Socialist ideals, equipped with the best of agricultural machinery purchased on credit from the Jewish Agency, was reaping- robbing the fruit of the labor of poor Arabs who had been expelled from their land and their country.(...)

The full article in Hebrew
.

Who am I?
Toward any anti-Semite, I am a Jew
To adherents of Greater Israel, a Palestinian
To white supremacists, I am black
In face of rampant Israeli nationalism, I am a diaspora Jew
To Jewish megalomania, a gentile
For European Neo-Nazis, let me be an Arab, a Turk and a Kurd
To Xenophobes, a migrant worker
To women haters, a feminist
In the presence of aristocrats, I am a commoner
And with smug generals, a conscientious objector
Oded Pilavsky, 2002

Oded Pilavsky had no funeral. He chose to donate his body to science. Instead, his family and friends will hold a memorial evening on Wednesday, April 27, at 7:30 pm, at Beit Sokolov, 4 Kaplan Street, Tel Aviv.

Posted by Adam Keller אדם קלר at 7:46 AM